Room 12

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…a spacious room with a hole in the floor. A ladder led down into the shadows. Outside, leaves shook in the wind. They didn’t like the look of that hole in the floor.

“Too dark down there!” they cried. “Who knows what’s at the bottom.” They looked at me again.

“Probably a room of some kind,” I volunteered quickly. “But you know what I say about appearances.” It would have been a relief to get outside for a while.

They wanted to know if they had been here before…. How could I answer that?

“I have the strangest feeling of déjà vu,” said one who, bolder than the rest, led us into…

 - Images and text copyright 1985 by Christopher Manson
used with permission. [Purchase MAZE from Amazon]

 

Room Type:  PATH     Doors:  2  8  21 39

Solution Summary: [COLLECTION CURATED BY WHITE Raven. SEE COMMENTS FOR ADDITIONAL SOLUTION PROPOSALS.]

● Correct door is 39. [Credit: Unknown - during the 1985 contest.]

● The part of the Riddle of the Path is the letters D U. [Credit: Unknown - prior to 1990.]

● 2 fingers in one of the paintings, 2 & 1 fingers in another painting, in the last painting the person “ate” = eight. This points to the doors 2, 21, & 8. The way not mentioned is 39, which is correct. [Independent Credit: jalhordan | White Raven]

12path

24 thoughts on “Room 12

  1. My thought here is a continuation of my unifying theory that the guide’s job is to misdirect the guests, and that solutions can be inferred from the guide’s deceptive suggestions as well as his emotional responses to the guests behavior.

    Much of the discussion amongst the guests revolves around the hole in the ground here. When they look to the guide for comment, he “volunteers an answer quickly”– indicating an overly hasty response– then immediately follows his answer with a contradiction, indicating that he may be second guessing his original response as too positive. He then immediately gets anxious having given too much attention to the correct door, 31, stating that it’d be a relief to get outside.

    He’s obviously uncomfortable with the attention so close to the correct door, and desires to move them along to the outside door, 21, which is the worst door here, the only one that doesn’t keep us in the path.

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    • Reasonable observations here. For me, though, the horror of the Guide comes less from a grand scheme malicious manipulation, and more being led through an unfamiliar, convoluted maze by an apathetic agent—one who gives you a fighting chance, but is entertained whether or not you escape.

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    • I read him as more malicious than apathetic. I can’t think of an instance in which he was happy about the group’s success, but their ultimate failure sends him into fits of laughter. Admittedly, we never see a group’s victory depicted (which incidentally is a very realistic decision), so we don’t know how the guide would react. But he doesn’t celebrate their small victories either.

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    • My reading of the Guide is mostly just how I remember his demeanor, and the wondrous-yet-frightening atmosphere I picked up as a kid. I’m going to go back to see if I can substantiate that reading, though. Here are some instances of the Guide being neutral-to-positive towards the guests. (Obviously, these can also be read as insincere.)
      Prologue: They think I will guide them to the center. Perhaps I will….
      (Unrelated, but I think that the Prologue is the only example of quadruple ellipses in Maze, where they occur twice. Perhaps Manson wrote the Prologue first, and switched up his habits down the line, or used some sort of format for all the room pages. There are also two examples of standard ellipses in the prologue, though. This is 99% likely to be meaningless, but I feel as though you mentioned ellipsis disparities before, Vince. Maybe Room 13?)
      Room 1: “It’s easy to get lost,” I said helpfully. “This can be a sinister place.”
      (This is snide, but actually rather forthright as well.)
      Room 15: Leaning on the sacrificial tripod I was suddenly moved to say, “Perhaps these numbers relate to each other in some specific combination…” Immediately I regretted this act of charity…sometimes I think, after all these years, that I don’t really know myself.
      Room 19: One of them sat on a marble bench after I politely pushed some flowers aside. “Did you pick these for me?” she asked, looking me in the eye. I had to tell her the truth.
      (Ambiguous and bittersweet interaction, but not malevolent.)
      Room 37: “Sometimes, important messages are couched in ambiguous terms,” I said. “That net may help you catch the answer to your question.”
      They looked doubtful. “We must look at this from all sides before we make a decision.” At last, they were learning.
      (This is one the closest things to the “end” of the victorious path, with 20 being accessible so close to the beginning.)
      Room 42: I assured them I would help them to return. “You can count on me,” I said sincerely.

      Looking back, apathetic was the wrong descriptor. The Guide is never actively angered by the guest’s success, but he does try to prevent it more often than facilitate it. Still, he reminds me of a fat housecat who doesn’t need to eat the mouse he’s toying around with, but will if it gets close enough.

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    • You raise good evidence. I concede that he is more ambiguous than I asserted.

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  2. Could relief refer to a work of art? The three wrong doors have artwork. Relief comes from Latin word to raise and the correct door is the one going down. The guide talks about going outside, but the one guaranteed way to not do that is to go down deeper.

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  3. Man, I wish this site had been around when I was in high school. My best friend and I were obsessed with this book; we wore out two copies of it across years of lunch table discussions.

    Anyway, with regards to the letters “U” and “D”, we thought that perhaps they also meant “decide under you” — with the “D” situated on its side and located beneath the “U” — to indicate the door through the floor.

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    • It looks about the same here but I don’t have my book in front of me right now. The three looks a bit bolder? The nine looks the same I think.

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  4. Reference Rooms 12 & 28 & 15:

    The picture of the young clean shaven bibbed eating person is an undergraduate student taking “courses”.
    The picture of the bearded older man with scroll: this is the Dean holding the diploma.
    The picture of the white bearded even older man is the wise professor.
    The perfectly square hole in the floor represents a “mortar board cap” for graduation with tag/tassel.
    The degree would be an MAS. The DU + MAS = DUMAS. We have been experiencing bells and telephones throughout MAZE that obviously clued Alexander Graham Bell. Here we have Alexander DUMAS.
    NOTE: See Room 15 for another important Alexander and ref to Alexander Dumas’ work.

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  5. Yes, Thanks. “IT WOULD” or i-T WO-uld. Also “TOO dark” and “to”
    That’s three times. It takes us directly to room 39. (13 X 3 or 13 +13+13)

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    • Well…other than knife and fork guy I’m not noticing 13. And although it seems we should try addition everywhere multiplicAtion seems rare and specially clued. Also the word “to” appears 144 times in Maze by my count so it’s frequency on this page is actually abnormally low. Slightly. “Too” is slightly more reasonable as it only happens 6 times in Maze. So while I’m usually on the other side of these debates I don’t thing that is intended. But I’ve tried to provided reasons that I think that

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    • Oh – and actually ‘to’ is in the text twice in room 12, so it does not even work on a technical level. And why would the three forms of “to/too/two” indicate 3 times anyway? Wondering now if someone is pulling my leg here…

      If so…A 5 letter string for “Raven” is a lot more significant than a 3 letter string. It occurs where the guide is talking about being animal. And the word “part” it turns out is always associated with one of these places where we can make or find a bird or raven-clue in the immediately surrounding text. So that is demonstrably non-random.

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  6. The ladder “led” down…the bold one “led” them – to the right door, down the dark hole, taking the ladder. This is interesting to contrast with the slide and the ladder in 41 where they also complain they don’t know where it will take them. The only difference here is the guide says there is a room of some sort and give us the line about “appearances” which are totally accurate when he uses the word. Also in 14 being led is a bad thing. But here they follow a person.

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  7. I don’t want to add my solutions to all rooms. But I DO think 39 is indicated. See below.

    This room is almost identical to room 28, and to find the correct exit the rooms need to be considered together. The picture on the right is holding up 2 fingers in both rooms. The picture on the left has 1 finger in this room but 2 in the other room. We might take these as false, too simple, clues to room 2 or 21. Also notice the bones on the plate in the third picture. There are two bones here, and one in the other room. (Thanks to my daughter Emily for noticing this one – age 9 at the time). Together all the bones and fingers give the number to the correct exit. 3 bones + 9 fingers = 39.

    We might have a bit of confirmation in the fact that the fork looks like a 3, and the knife sounds like a 9. Also the U pointing *up* and the D lying *down* might be a clue as well – that we should take the ladder. The U and The D are also the letters we should gather from this room to help us spell “SHOULDERS”.

    There is one more difference between the rooms. The sky is darker in room 28 than here. I think this is the only directional clue in room 28 itself. It is saying that direction is a bad choice in room 28 since it leads to a trap.

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  8. Painting on the right is showing 2 + 1 fingers (21)

    Middle painting is showing a 2 (2)

    Far left painting shows no fingers, but he just ATE his meal, as evidenced by the clean bones on his plate. (8)

    The only room NOT being hinted at in the image is 39.

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    • Nice. So once again, we’re supposed to go to the one not hinted at. That seems to be the big theme in so many of these rooms. I’m starting to wonder how universal it is!

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    • jalhordan (or should I say Hal Jordan),

      Congratulations you cracked a room! Not only is this obviously the correct answer but this solution was confirmed by Manson when I ran it by him last year. Consider yourself to have received a virtual high five from me and a standing ovation from prisoners of the Abyss.

      This room has been upgraded from 2/5 to 5/5. This is the third room to be completely solved. 42 rooms to go!

      White Raven

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  9. Just for the record, it’s worth noting that this is the mirror room of 28, a room that you’ll never visit if you stay on the correct path. On that page’s notes, Emily wrote, “The only differences that I can find are the # of bones in the bottom left picture and the hands of the man in the painting on the left wall…”

    Do I know what those differences mean? Of course not! :)

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  10. Room 8 Solution: Partial
    Eleventh room of the path – The letters to take from this room are “U” and “D.”

    The correct door is 39. We don’t know why.

    Unsolved: Everything but the “U” and “D.”

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